Monastery of the Holy Cross

Mark McGwire was something of a hero of mine back in the late 80’s and early 90’s when he played with the Oakland Athletics at a time when they had the most talented team in baseball.  McGwire was always a pure power hitter.  He put up some cartoonish numbers in the days before steroids.  Then the year after I entered the monastery, he achieved the unthinkable, not only breaking Roger Maris’ home run record, but breaking it by 15% (up to 70 in a season from 61).  People who never cared about baseball were suddenly following the amazing power duel between McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Then, of course, we found out that they probably cheated.  Probably hundreds of professional baseball players took steroids in the 90’s.  I don’t follow baseball the way I used to.  It’s a sad thing, but then, it’s really just a game in the end.  What is sadder is that grown men would risk early death, sterility and a wealth of other health problems just to play baseball better.

So yesterday, after years of silence and denials, McGwire publicly apologized and said that his steroid use was the biggest mistake he ever made.  I’ve glanced at a few headlines about the interview he gave, and unsurprisingly, the majority of commentators are still mad as heck, and want him to say something more.  In a word, they’re not ready to forgive him.

In the minority was a writer for Sports Illustrated named Joe Posnanski.  He wrote:

The definition of “forgive” is to “stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for an offense, flaw or mistake.” That’s all. Forgiveness isn’t something that someone else can take from you… it’s something you offer up for whatever reason makes sense to you. There are always reasons to not forgive. No apology is perfect. No apology comes early enough. No apology goes deep enough. No apology covers every aspect of things. And there’s a reason for this. No apology can erase the wrong in the first place.

Not bad.  All this caught my attention because I have often written on forgiveness, and of course as a priest serving Jesus Christ, I have a professional interest in forgiveness.  Posnanski is absolutely correct.  We have a mistaken idea that forgiveness comes after the offender has convincingly shown his abject compunction–convincing to me, that is.  We seem to want some kind of justice that in many cases simply can’t be had.  We can’t go back and replay the 1998 season with McGwire and Sammy Sosa not on steroids.  We can’t resurrect Roger Maris and let him replay 1961 with steroids (he surely wouldn’t want to, as both he and Hank Aaron received death threats as they took down the slugging records of the sacrosanct Babe Ruth), and see what happens.

When I was taught to fold my hands to pray as a child, I was told to place one thumb over the other while recalling ‘mercy over judgment’.  We can’t ever return God what we justly owe Him.  Not only do we owe Him our lives, but we have incurred all kinds of debts by our bad choices, and we can’t undo them.  So we need God’s forgiveness.  God offers forgiveness, and not after we clear some arbitrary bar of contrition and self-flagellation and abasement.  ”While we were yet sinners Christ died for us [Rom 5: 8].”

Two final observations: forgiveness is not yet reconciliation.  To be reconciled to God, we must accept His forgiveness and work at making amends in some way.  That is why the sacrament of reconciliation is not called the sacrament of forgiveness only.  Penance is prescribed as a way of helping us grow in an earnest desire to live a godly life, a life with God, in friendship with God.  It is a show of goodwill on our part for having received forgiveness and absolution.

Most importantly, forgiveness is not the same as ‘forgetting.’  Posnanski got this right, too:

When Mark McGwire finished with his day of apologies, I forgave him. It doesn’t mean I look at his 70-home run season the way I did in 1998. It doesn’t mean that I respect the choices he made. It doesn’t even mean that I agree with his self-scouting report. No. I just mean that if there was any anger or resentment toward him for cheating, it is gone now.

Now it must be said that the example I’m citing here is pretty trivial: cheating at baseball isn’t murder or sexual assault or any other heinous crime (though it did inspire a Senate committee investigation!  While we are at war in a collapsing economy!).  Though the ire of many commentators on the topic suggests otherwise, it doesn’t cost Posnanski a lot to let go of whatever anger he felt.  When working at forgiving serious wrongs, it can take years of effort to let go.  But the dynamic is the same.  Forgiveness is not something that excuses a wrong or pretends it didn’t happen.  It is about learning to live with being wronged and not letting the wrong suffered master us through anger, guilt, sadness.  These feelings are not wrong when prompted by real injustice.  But remaining angry forever means that the perpetrator, in a sense, has won.  As Holocaust survivor Eva Kor has put it, “Forgiving is something that we must do for ourselves.”

The pattern for Christians is Jesus Christ.  After His resurrection, he returns to the Apostles, not to scold them for deserting Him, but to wish them peace.  And when He wishes them peace, He shows them His hands and side.  He is not pretending that His body hadn’t been pierced by nails and a sword, that He hadn’t died.  He doesn’t say, “Don’t worry about it; no big deal.”  Rather, He brings forgiveness and extends the possibility of reconciliation in the new creation.  No matter how horrific the evil, God’s goodness is infinitely more powerful, and God will redress the wrongs of this world.

N.B. For those of you who might be concerned by the spectacle of a monk knowing a lot about baseball, I might add that I was the sports reporter for WJLW 95.9 FM once upon a time, 1987-1988, just when McGwire was breaking in (the station ran a country format back then; it’s changed frequency and switched to what appears to be classic rock; I was also the Saturday morning DJ!  Here’s to Johnny Cash and Marty Robins, my favorites in those days).